DAZE OF OUR TIMES: The dawning of the age of Dowd!

Part 1—Hair, hair, glorious hair: Years ago, the young people sang about their glorious hair:

THE YOUNG PEOPLE, SOME WITHOUT CLOTHING!
Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair

Let it fly in the breeze
And get caught in the trees
Give a home to the fleas in my hair
A home for fleas
A hive for bees
A nest for birds
There ain't no words
For the beauty, the splendor, the wonder
Of my

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair

In those days, you had to go to Broadway to take in this twaddle. Today, it forms the basis for the front-page “news reporting” of our nation’s dumbest newspaper.

Last Friday, the New York Times let its freak flag show, as it so frequently does. Ashley Parker devoted a front-page “news report” to—what else?—Mitt Romney’s glorious hair. This is the way the Times’ empty child began her “news report:”

PARKER (11/25/11): Voters routinely ask about it on the campaign trail. Pundits chronicle the slightest changes in its presentation. There is a Facebook page devoted to it—not to mention an entire blog. “Has it always been this good?” read a recent online entry.

The subject of the unusually intense political speculation and debate?

Mitt Romney’s hair.

If it’s inanity you enjoy, we’ll suggest that you read the whole thing. Parker’s listed co-author is Michael Barbaro, though that may have been a clever attempt at some amusing word-play.

Did we mention the fact that this “news report” appeared on the Times’ front page?

We’ve mentioned the vacuous Parker before. She seems to be her newspaper's Next Big Thing—one of the tools by which the Times is spreading its fatuous culture. Super-comically, she spent five years as Maureen Dowd’s “research assistant,” whatever that could possibly mean (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/29/11). And this is fitting, since it was Dowd, more than anyone else, who made the various candidates’ hair a subject for front-line analysis.

Dowd obsessively focused on Al Gore’s bald spot during Campaign 2000. Before that, she had obsessed on Rudy Giuliani’s comb-over. In 2007 and 2008, she routinely called Candidate Edwards “the Breck Girl,” combining her obsession with hair with her throwback gender values. But then, these twin obsessions were also at play when she obsessed about Gore’s bald spot. Two days before the Bush-Gore election, the Times’ most famous broken-souled clown began her Sunday column like this:

DOWD (11/5/00): I Feel Pretty

I feel stunning
And entrancing,
Feel like running and dancing for joy . . .

O.K., enough gloating. Behave, Albert. Just look in the mirror now and put on your serious, I only-care-about-the-issues face.

If I rub in a tad more of this mahogany-colored industrial mousse, the Spot will disappear under my Reagan pompadour.

Dowd has been visibly crazy for years, but her paper is so pervasively stupid that no one has seemed to notice. At any rate, as Dowd obsessed about everyone’s hair, the dumbness spread all through Times culture.

(Two days after Dowd pictured Gore obsessing about his bald spot, the closest election in history occurred. Are you sure the outcome wasn’t tipped by Dowd’s two-year obsession with hair? She wrote seven columns in which she pictured Gore addressing his bald spot. Because the Times is our dumbest newspaper, this bilge was actually published!)

More than any other player, Dowd made hair—glorious hair!—a subject for political coverage. Last Friday, her fatuous 28-year-old former assistant drove this culture even further. Today, Parker offers even more nonsense—a pitifully sad “Political Memo” about friendships among the Republican candidates.

3 comments:

"Young people" didn't write the musical Hair. Older people were concerned about hair and young people used that concern to aggravate them (and to identify members of the police or military who were required to maintain their hair at certain lengths).